


throwing darts in lovers' eyes

by blue_blue_electricblue



Series: unironic ironic elias/reader [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Eye Trauma, Love Confessions, Other, Sacrifice, bad people in love, he doesn't die don't worry, no one dies here, reader is a beholder, you've got History (tm) with elias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:14:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24041149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_blue_electricblue/pseuds/blue_blue_electricblue
Summary: Elias, on his way out of the Panopticon, gets fatally injured by Not!Sasha. And you do everything in your power to save him.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Reader
Series: unironic ironic elias/reader [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1754923
Comments: 8
Kudos: 67





	throwing darts in lovers' eyes

**Author's Note:**

> this one's more self-insert-y than i would like but i need to defend my title of "author of half of all elias/reader fics on ao3" and this is what i had on hand. if it comes to it i'll post all my valet stuff but i'm not Done with his story yet and i'd like to sort that out first, so he will stay in development for a little while. besides, that's more jonah/reader than elias/reader. still, if you'd like to know abt being Jonah Magnus's valet who he seduces and then devoting your life to him, feel free to dm me, my twitter should be in the end notes
> 
> uhh title is taken from Station to Station by David Bowie
> 
> i think that's everything i wanted to say? hope y'all enjoy!!

“Elias, oh my god, what the  _ fuck _ happened?”

Elias chuckles breathily somehow, despite the fact that he is  _ slumped down against a wall _ and  _ panting _ and  _ bleeding oh god bleeding everywhere. _

“I really should have gotten that Stranger out of the Archives,” he says, and his voice is faint and and tired and you want to scream or cry or rage or  _ something _ .

You finally get close enough to fall to your knees beside him and check his wounds desperately. A  _ deep _ puncture wound to the abdomen, the Beholding tells you, and you Know just how to treat it because of that lifeguarding class you took twelve years ago but thanks to the Eye you don’t forget information, not ever, and so you strip off your jacket and press it tightly against the wound that is bleeding  _ far _ too much.

Someone is speaking, an incoherent stream of ‘you’re gonna be okay’ and ‘oh god oh god oh god’ and ‘what the  _ fuck _ Elias’ and it takes a moment to realize that it’s you.

Elias lifts a hand to your face and gently presses his palm to your cheek.

“I hope you’re not overly attached to the name Elias,” he says. “I fear I may not use it for much longer.”

You can feel blood, slick and warm, against your cheek. Elias’s blood. 

“What do you need,” you ask with sudden fervor. “What do you need. Whatever you need, I will get it for you, just tell me what you need so you can  _ live, _ alright? You old bastard, you’ve been around for two centuries you’re so close to winning you can’t  _ die _ now, you’re going to win so just tell me what you need so you can get out of this  _ alive. _ ”

“A body,” he replies. “I need you to get me a body to transfer into. As soon as possible, if you please; I’d rather not find out what happens when my current vessel bleeds out with me in it. I have a feeling it won’t be pleasant.”

You look at him for a moment, look him in his beautiful, ancient eyes. Then you look down at the puncture wound, then at the blood pooling around him. Your hands are covered in it. You feel  _ Elias’s blood _ on your face.

“Put your arm down,” you tell him to distract from the dawning horror within you. You’re wasting blood and energy, put your arm  _ down. _ ”

There are about two-point-two-seven liters of blood on the floor, in your jacket, on your hands, on your face, the Beholding tells you in its detached manner. A man of Elias’s weight had about six-point-three-eight liters of blood in his body. He had lost about thirty-five-point-five-eight percent of his blood, in which case, he was in incredible danger. You would have to find him a new body as soon as possible.

It had taken you thirty four minutes and fifteen seconds to find your way down the tunnels and to Elias.

If you left to get him another body now, he would be dead by the time you got back.

You serve fear. You serve fear, and you are afraid constantly in your servitude, and you inspire fear, and you love fear.

The sense of dread that overcomes you now as the fear you serve and love so loyally informs you that the love of your life will surely die if you don’t take immediate action is nothing like fear. It is the worst feeling in the entire world.

Elias’s hand slips from your face and it has been point-seven-four seconds since you told him to do that. It didn’t even take you a second to realize that the man you love will surely die.

But you serve the God of Knowledge. And the God of Knowledge is particularly handy in problem-solving.

The answer manages to come to you in the remaining point-two-six of a second.

“What do you need to do,” you ask. “I can’t get a body down here fast enough, so you need to tell me what you need to do with  _ my _ body. You need to take it, I need you to live, okay? I know you wouldn’t do the same for me but  _ take _ it, alright?”

Elias takes a shuddering inhale. “Wait. You don’t know—”

“Jonah  _ fucking _ Magnus you shut your mouth and do whatever you need to do to me right now so you can live to see another day.”

A dark look flashes in his eyes for a moment, and in that moment, you breach the promise you and he had of never Looking into the other’s mind, and you see clawing fingers, gouging and pulling and scratching at eyes.

The image makes you gasp sharply, and Elias looks as though he would beat you bloody if he wasn’t bleeding out himself.

“Look into my head, payback, turnabout is fair play, whatever,” you say to him, and you feel his powerful presence inside your skull before you even finish the sentence. It will examine you in your entirety. It will Know your every secret, all of the ones that seemed so important to hide not even yesterday.

You can’t imagine what you were so scared of him Knowing, now. You know what true terror and dread is, now, and it’s Elias bleeding out and no one to save him.

“I’m going to pull my eyes out,” you say very calmly. “And you’re going to put your eyes into my skull. You know why.”

“You love me,” he says.

“More than life itself. It’s okay,” you say before he can respond to that, “I know you’ll never love anything as much as you love your life. So quit beating around the bush. And take my fucking eyes already. Tell me  _ exactly _ how it needs to be done to keep you safe.”

“Surely we can come to a compromise,” he replies, and then coughs, and you don't need to look to Know that  _ oh god he just spit up blood. _

“Compromise?” you repeat, your voice a little hysterical. “What the fuck do you mean, compromise? You need a body, I’m willing to give it, and I will not watch you  _ die, _ Jonah, I won’t, I won’t, I can Watch everything in the world but I won’t watch you die—”

“Has it occured to you, in your tiny, selfish mind, that I might not want to watch  _ you _ die, either?” he growls out, low and furious.

“I would sacrifice my life and body for you, and  _ I’m _ the selfish one,” you snap. “It’s  _ fine, _ Jonah, I know you don’t want to die, and it’s  _ fine _ you know I think death is romantic, you know I love you, you know I wouldn’t mind dying, and especially not for you, so just take my fucking eyes already, just  _ take  _ them,  _ please _ .”

Elias doesn’t respond, but his arm shifts as if he is trying to raise it to your face once more.

You shift back away from him. “Fine,” you say. “I’ll do it  _ myself—” _

And suddenly, before you can raise your hands to your eyes, Elias is gripping your wrists with a force that is too powerful for a man who’s lost nearly forty percent of his blood.

“You will  _ listen _ to me,” he hisses. “You will do  _ exactly _ as I ask, and we will both survive this.”

“If it’s a risk to you, I won’t do it,” you say. “I won’t do a single thing if you could get hurt. If it means you might not survive this. I won’t—”

“You will do,” he grinds out, his grip tightening on your wrists to the point where it was  _ painful, _ to the point where you could almost feel your bones complaining, creaking, being pushed to the breaking point, “ _ exactly. _ As I tell you. And we will both live. And while it’s not exactly something I’ve  _ tried _ before, I have confidence that it will work.”

You examine his face, your eyes darting back and forth, scanning it for any sign he might be lying. Tentatively, you try to Know what he is thinking, and he lets you in obligingly.

You look into his eyes for a long moment.

“Okay,” you say. “Okay, I can do that. I can do that. And you’ll survive.”

“I will.”

He releases your hands and you subconsciously rub at them. You do not break eye contact.

“Yes,” he says.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“But you wanted to. You were going to ask. So ask.”

You stare for another moment. It is in your nature to stare, after all.

“Will it hurt?” you finally ask.

“Yes,” he tells you. “Worse than anything you could ever experience.”

You raise your hand to his cheek and leave a bloody handprint on his skin, a grisly mirror of your own. “Okay.”

And then you take your hand and begin to press your fingers into your left eye socket.

“Try and keep the eye intact,” Jonah says, and that’s the last thing you can process before your world explodes into pain.

If you could be detached from this process, you would catalogue it as one of the most interesting of your life. The feel of your fingers slipping under your eyelid, your thumb beneath your eye, and then gentle squeezing and coaxing to lure it out of its home, urging slightly and  _ pushing _ back and around the eye, careful not to put too much pressure on it and potentially pop it. If it was popped, there would be no recovering it, and Jonah did want to keep it.

But because you do have certain, ah, affiliations, there is no way to detach yourself from the invasive feeling and then the sheer, unadulterated  _ panic _ that courses through you at the threat of the removal of your  _ eye _ your  _ eye _ this is your connection to  _ god _ and every part of you that was trained to be a devotee  _ screams _ out in protest,  _ screams _ that this is blasphemy, this is  _ evil  _ this is  _ wrong _ this is a  _ severance. _

The Beholding furiously punishes that which it believes is a turncoat, and you  _ scream _ along with the devotee inside you.

The eye comes out in your hand, and blood pours down from the hole where it once was, and tears stream from the eye that remains. And you hold your eye out and offer it to Jonah.

The pain sharply lances through where your eye used to be, physical and spiritual, like someone is grinding salt or sediment in it, or some horrible ritual to purify the area, to burn it, to clear it, to bring it back to what it once  _ was. _ It is horrifying.

“And now?” you say, your voice suddenly hoarse from screaming.

“And now you watch me do the same,” he says, and reaches into his own eye socket.

It is over surprisingly quickly, with Jonah, and while he screams, too, it seems like it is rote at this point. Swift and delicate and made to minimize the amount of pain.

He is panting as he holds his eye, and then places it into your hand, and takes your eye in return.

“Put that… into your skull,” he says. “Then we’ll have to remove and preserve the other eye in this body, but for now. Put that into your socket.”

“I love you, you know,” you tell him. “I know you know, and I know I told you before, but I really love you.”

And you lift his eye and put it into your face, and your world explodes into pain once more.

It is too  _ much _ it is too  _ much _ there is too much you can See too much you can See— 

You can See Jon and Martin escaping the Institute— 

You can See people bleeding out upstairs, you can— 

You can See the police coming so  _ slowly _ you can See— 

You can See Simon Fairchild laughing, you can See— 

You can See the  _ world  _ and all the petty people in it with all their petty thoughts and you can  _ See _ them all, you can See it, you can See  _ everything, _ and it  _ hurts,  _ and you See—

You See— 

You can See a mirror and you can See a man with red hair and green green green eyes, green like the eye you just put into your head, and he is talking and he is saying—saying  _ something _ and you have to Know you have to Know you can Know so much now you have to—

This is a memory, you realize. This is a memory to get you used to Seeing everything, all the time, this will help you acclimate.

You See many memories, now, memories of employees, of people from history, of people that—people that mattered and were lost to time, like everyone else is. You see a boy in a flower crown smile at you briefly before the image flits past—you see a furious employee shouting and how  _ beautiful _ their face looks when impassioned—you see a young man with a mischievous glint in his eyes glance at you from across the room—you see a large man with a big beard and a peacoat throw his head back and laugh—you see a skittish, sweet thing look into your eyes gratefully—you see a tattooed man, handsome and sweet, telling you jokes—you see a kid in a flapper dress squeal as you pick them up—you See you See you See—

You see yourself.

Twenty-seven and exhausted with bright, feral eyes, looking like you haven’t eaten in six days, looking like you’d be willing to tear someone apart for any scrap of knowledge.

And then—

Thirty-seven and exhausted but gorgeous, eyes still bright and feral, a bloody handprint on their cheek, and you are saying something that is  _ painful _ and  _ unacceptable,  _ and looking like you’d be willing to tear someone apart if they stopped you from doing this thing, this thing that hurt more than the wound in your side.

“Oh,” you say softly.

“Hm,” you feel your own mouth respond to you, a hum of assent, one that you’d heard many times when you were just getting used to your abilities, when you were just still learning, still studying.

“You—I—”

“You and I,” he says wryly with your mouth. “Indeed.”

A grin breaks out across your face.

“Stop that,” he says in your voice, which is a  _ fascinating _ experience. “I have a reputation to build for you.”

“Oh, please,” you say. “This is a temporary arrangement, because I need to kiss you on the mouth, and when I get you out of here, I’ll want  _ my _ reputation intact. Ugh,” you groan as you suddenly realize something quite unfortunate. “Does this mean I’m going to have to take a sabbatical or sick leave or something to run your stupid Institute?”

“Yes,” he says smugly. “But don’t worry. I think that it will be cut short.”

You smile, joyful, excited, thrilled. “You’re going to win.”

“I will.”

“ _ God, _ I love you.”

“I know. Now, let’s collect up the, ah, spare eyes? We need to look after them. This is, as you say, a temporary arrangement, and we’ll need them when this is all over.”

There’s a rather long silence. 

Jonah Magnus sighs with your lungs.

“And yes, fine. I suppose I love you, too.”

You grin. “I Know.”

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/bluezaffre)!!


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